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UNIFICATION 

Of North America 



A LAW, A BUSINESS, A DUTY 



A PLAN OF CONTINENTAL CONSTRUCTION 



presented thi;hit;h 



GEOEGE BATCHELOK 

Citizen of Unitized America 



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UNIFICATION 

OF NORTH AMERICA. 



i. 

1. All ends in Unity. 

2. Man is, on a condensed scale, a perfect world within 
himself. 

Mind and matter, centre and circumference, free with 
his will but captive of his wants, whole and part, light 
and mirror, sense and perception, action and actor, 
Man has been evolving, ever since the dawn of his histo- 
ry, the august purposes of his individual and collective 
life. 

Had he cast his regards inward or outward, earthward 
or heavenward, Man might have comprehended at a 
glance what was his lot to discover, to develop, to per- 
petuate. These firmaments secured by starry nails, those 
oceans swelled by their rock-bound fountains, this earth 
so fecund and so beautiful, that smiling family gathered 
around his hearth — each and all of these creations, 
though varying in forms, attributes, and functions, had 
a specific destination : they were gravitating toward a 
common centre. However, this centripetal direction was 



2 • UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 

not to be intelligently followed until from ages to ages 
Man bad groped across tbe entire spbere, mapping on 
the way tbe unclaimed portions of his domain. Before 
he was permitted to grasp the Universe, Man had to grow 
up to Humanity. 

3. Kept awake by the throbbing of the divine law 
through whose unconscious agency he had appropriated 
his vast apanage of land and water, Man aspired to as- 
sert by Universal domination his mastery over his fellow- 
beings and over nature. Ambition, self-defense, dynastic 
requirements, national necessity, religious zeal, God- 
appointed mission, what names and verbal disguises 
have not the conquerors used, simply to obey the behests 
of Unitism? 

Recall to mind the great empires of antiquity, their he- 
roes and their legendary exploits and their authentic 
thirst after more territory. Do you still hear the sobs of 
\1( xander of Macedon in presence of the ocean oppbg 
its unbounded immensities to the boundlessness of his 
desires ? 

The Jews, assigning to the voice of their i and 

to the text of their scriptures a literal interpretation, 

entertained the idea that they were predestined to com- 

nand the world. The Messiah, so Ion 

ixpected to deliver their race and establish Israelitish 

lupremacy of religion and government. 

Tin- Etonian people^ who eta 11 in- 

pushed tin ir eonquests to the extremitie 

earth <>1' the Ancients! Whai energy of i 
' \\ b .i' valor OS the battle-field ! What wisdom in 
council ! 



UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 3 

To the declining power of imperial Rome succeeded 
the spiritual puissance, which has beeu transmitted from 
St. Peter to Pius IX, during eighteen consecutive centu- 
ries, and whose dictates aud tenets radiate from the Vati- 
can to Polynesia and the continents. 

Mahomet and his fanatic successors, Koran and sword 
in hands, overwhelmed Asia and invaded Europe. No- 
body can predict where their propagandisin would have 
stopped, if Charles Martel had not hammered it down in 
the plains of Southern France. 

We meet, amid the debris of the Roman empire, the 
shadow of Charlemagne covering the Eastern hemisphere. 

The barbaric hordes of Gengis-Khan and Tamerlane 
are arrested at the gates of Europe— the want of vessels 
to transport them thither frustrating the designs of 
world-wide conquest cherished by those blood-thirsty 
commanders. 

Russia, bom of the principality of Muscow, accepts 
from Peter Romanoff, the carpenter of her incipient 
greatness, the mission to subjugate the world ; she spares 
neither blood nor treasure to execute it according to the 
letter and spirit of the testament of the illustrious 
legator. 

Napoleon Buonaparte, whose birth-island is anchored 
in the Mediterranean waters that lave the shores of 
three continents, sacrificed to his Unitic projects every- 
thing that obstructed his march : he blew to atoms, at 
the mouth of the cannon, the republic that had raised 
him; he twice overturned his own throne. At St. Helena, 
his political dreams and his military speculations em- 
brace the world : he reconstructs the Old and organizes 
the New. 



4 UNIFICATION OP NORTH AMERICA. 

4. Let us now take a trip across the Atlantic, and ob- 
serve if the same governing motor — that precipitated so 
often nation against nation in the Oriental hemisphere — 
obtained also in the new-found lands of the Occidental, 
or whether Unitism embarked for the first time on board 
the emigrant vessels from Europe. 

Who knows but one, or perhaps several, of the autoch- 
tonous races — that have at one period or another treaded 
the soil of America — exercised a universal authority over 
the Continent ? 

May it not be properly contended that, at the ante- 
European epoch of settlements, the Indian Aborigines — 
having so many traits of physical and social resemblan- 
ces that they might be called one nation — occupied the 
country from one end to the other ? 

Cristoforo Colombo, guided by the Unitary star, 
opened America to Spain, the Cabotas to England, Jac- 
ques Cartier to France. 

Each of these nations attempted in turn to take pos- 
session of the entire Continent. 

At the beginning of this century, Spain possessed near- 
ly the whole of South America, all Central America, 
Mexico with her former limits, together with Florida, 
Louisiana, and establishments, on the Northern Pacific 
coast, extending as far as the Columbia river. Dry up 
the Mississippi, and you will find the tomb of De Soto, 
its discoverer. The Spaniards <li<l not strive to ascend 
farther north because they delighl basking in the equa- 
torial sun rather than affronting the cold blasts of the 
hyper-tropical zone. 



UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 

France put her military genius to task in order to suffo- 
cate and starve and crush out the English colonies of the 
seaboard. Who should remain masters of these habita- 
ble solitudes, of the French or of the English, such 
was the real object of this prolonged struggle. All was 
lost — for, what had cost miles of soldiers and heaps of 
piasters, La Pompadour estimated at the contemptible 
value of a few acres of snow. New France was doomed 
to disappear from the map of America, thanks to the 
abandonment of the home government and to the well- 
concerted blows of England and her American colonies. 

The treaty of 1763 consecrated the victories of Great 
Britain. Her sway extended now over the greater part 
of North America and of the West Indies. 

Mighty, indeed, had been the efforts of these three 
Unificent nations ! 

The reign of England, however, was destined to be 
short-lived. The minds of the colonists had been too 
sharpened by hard-earned experience not to allure them 
to the conclusion that the union of their military forces, 
which had proved so effective against the French and 
their allies, might be employed in their own deliverance. 

Every reader of the history of the United States is fa- 
miliar with the planting of colonies, along the Atlantic 
coast, by the English, French, Dutch, and Swedes — with 
their gradual moving toward the foot of the Allegha- 
nies — with then war of independence — with their organ- 
ization into a perfected confederacy — with their sliding 
on the Western slope of the Alleghanies down to the 
Mississippi — with their march hence to the Rocky Moun- 
tains — with their climbing over those vertebrae of the 
Continent — never stopping, after having absorbed every 



8 (NIFICATION OF NOR^H AMERICA. 

intervening territory, uutil, alighting upon the moun- 
tain-tops and then upon the snow-flu. 1 peaks, they had 
11. stled cities on the margin of the Pacific ocean. 

Resuming the Unification of North America where 
France and England left it half completed, the United 
Slates have steadily advanced in parallel lines from the 
Eastern shores to those of the West. 

Shall they halt in the midst of their extraordinary 
career? Why should they not drive to the Arctic circles 
and steer round the Gulf of Mexico? Is it believable 
that they have made these vast strides across the Conti- 
nent without any profound thought underlying their 
movements ? 



5. To-day, the United States stand geographically 
phalous and limbless. They resemble their own cari- 
catures of John Bull with his obese belly flabbing down. 
Shall they suffer themselves to stay thus cramped and 
incomplete, when the separate parts of the Continent, 
bleeding from anarchy and discontent, dema id th ir po- 
litical connection with the main trunk? The duties of 
the United States augment in direct ratio of their mas- 
si/.e and of their irresistible prestige. Let them 
finish promptly the work of unifying North America! 
Will they remain deaf to the utterances of the seers, re- 
sounding back from generation to generation? 

America is composed of two continents superposed 

upon one another ; North and South America. They 
will be treated, accordingly, as two distinct continental 
organisms. The America of the North is the only conti- 
nent whose Unity is advocated for the present. 

1 



UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 7 

Oceans surround the head and sides of North Ameri- 
ca. Its feet, right and left, rest upon the broad shoul- 
ders of the twin Continent. The island o| Trinidad, the 
southernmost of the larger Antilles, shall form the southern 
boundary on the right. The left limits will be fixed in 
the Gulf of Darien, at the mouth of the Atrato ; whence 
follow the course of that river to its source, then cross 
by a straight line to the head waters of the San Juan, 
which empties at Chirambira, on the Pacific. To avoid 
difficulties about confines and the inhabitants, the 
ceded territory should comprise the valleys of both 
rivers, between the Western Cordilleras and the ocean. 
Every piece of land situated above this double southern 
boundary, as far as the poles, belongs to North America. 
On account of their greater proximity to our coasts and 
for their own convenience, the Bermudas in the Atlantic 
and the Sandwich Islands in the Pacific should be 
moored alongst our- Continent. 

There is now-a-days such a rapid succession of events 
that your statements of last become obsolete this, month. 
To obviate these constantly occurring changes, the date 
of the 1st January, 1867, is chosen as the fixed point up 
to which references will be made. 

North America may be divided into three parts, name- 
ly : Northern, Central, and Southern. The Northern 
portion is occupied by the Russian, British, and Dan- 
ish possessions; the Central, by the United States; the 
Southern, by that continuation of Florida, the archipela- 
go comprising the Bahamas and the Antilles, as also by 
Mexico, the Central American States, and some provinces 
belonging to New Granada. United, these countries 
would measure eight million five hundred thousand 
square miles. 



8 UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 

Here, climates mark their passage from the eternal 
winters of the Arctic regions to the perpetual summers of 
the lands bordering on the Equator. Productions blos- 
som or wither in their train. Nature is the grandest, 
the most fruitful, all self-sufficient. 

Fifty-five millions of souls flourish on the bosom of 
North America. 

They appertain to the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, 
and American Indian races. The latter claim to be 
Aborigines, whilst the rest are by descent European, 
Asiatic, and African. 

A traveller may hear, in passing among groups of this 
mixed population, the idiom of the Esquimaux and the 
Indian dialects, the English, the French, Spanish and 
Italian, the German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Nor- 
wegian, the Russian and the Chinese. ' 

Paganism prevails among the native tribes; Budhism 
accompanies the Chinese ; Mormonism is hatching at 
Utah ; Rationalism attends the Freethinkers; the masses 
profess the Christian religion. 

The independent governments of the Continent are 
administered by nine presidents, one emperor, one king, 
besides a number of aboriginal chiefs. The colonies pay 
obedience to two emperors, three kings, and two queens. 
This statement shows the existence of eighteen distinct 
.ignties. 

6. Does any country on the face of this earthy crust 
presenl equal advantages of configuration, broadening 
to three thousand miles and tapering, through well-maa- 
aged gradations, to forty miles? Can miy region occupj 
a mure pentsal position, floating like ;i buoy fastened 
the hand of :i god in the midst of the oceans? Could 



UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 9 

any land combine a greater perfection of organic life, 
whether it concerns the completeness of its parts, the 
compactness of its frame, the regularity and extent of 
its circulatory apparatus, or the wiry construction of its 
nervous system ? North America reunites in the highest 
degree the conditions prescribed for a healthy physical 
state : a cool head, a well-fed stomach, and warm feet. 

Is such a body of inseparable lands forever condemned 
to political isolation from its centre ? No ! American 
nations, replace this manyness of sovereignties by one- 
ness of administration. Look at the economy and little 
complexity of the process! The federative form of the 
United States government solicits, far from repelling, 
fresh companionship of States. One elective President 
may easily govern fifty States. Take an introspective 
view of your new relations and judge for yourselves of 
their possibility. 

Freedom, extended to all subjects of human import 
and limited only by the equal rights of your neighbors, 
must be the corner-stone of the Unificial edifice. 

The fundamental sameness of religions will be a guar- 
antee that consciences need not borrow alarm. 

Popularized by universal education, the etymological 
similarities of our continental languages will facilitate the 
transactions of private and public business. 

The convergence of interests will be encouraged by 
the contrast of productions from the various zones as 
well as by the diversity of industrial pursuits. 

The juxtaposition of races, compelled to live side by 
side or to hold rapports of more or less frequency, will 
impart larger ideas of Christian toleration ; it will in- 
spire an exalted conception of humanitarian brother- 
hood, by the influence of which natural differences of 



10 UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 

whatever kind will meet a mutual respect, as those of 
height, color, weight, intellect, appetite, do in the ordi- 
nary course of life among people of the same race, 
language, and religion. 

May these prospects of stability and harmony redeem 
the sacrifices made on the altar of local attachments and 
national prejudices ! 

7. What influences are capable of arresting the expan- 
sion of our territory and the germination of these benign 
principles ? 

The European powers inimical to this government — 
for some reasons common to the three, and for others 
peculiar to each — are England, France, and Spain. 

The United States are corseted by British possessions, 
forts, commercial outposts and depots. England com- 
mands the mouths of the St. Lawrence, the Bahama chan- 
; where Nassau, of blockade memory, is secreted, the 
entrance of the Gulf of Mexico and of the Caribbean sea. 
From her ports on the Pacific, connected through num- 
berless islands and Australia with her East India pos- 
jions, would sally a fleet ready to pounce upon our 
merchantmen. 

In case of war, France, Spain, and England, allied, 
could hermetically close the Southern American waters 
■nst the vessels of the United States. If the tripar- 
tite q maintained and carried out, 
tli" policy of intervention which it inaugurated might 
! the turn of affairs, both with 
' and the Southern States in rebel' 
I] we profit by our ? Shut our 
of ■ :.i n ■ 



UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 11 

Moreover, the West India Islands form a natural com- 
plement of our geographical system. Their position is 
commanding at once the broad ocean and land-locked 
seas. American trade requires Ainei-ican ports, and the 
navy needs American stations for rendezvous and for 
protection. How long shall they be deprived of both ? 

Whilst the West India group of isles are pointed as 
useful to the increasing exigencies of American com- 
merce and as indispensable to our national security, the 
countries that rise opposite their in-gulf sides are at- 
tracting, like a horn of universal plenty, the attention 
of the most enterprising nations. 

The territory frora the Rio Grande to the Atrato — 
containing Mexico, Yucatan, Guatemala, Balize, San 
Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the 
Colombian States of Panama and Cauca — is fast be- 
coming what nature made it, the most valuable piece of 
ground of the whole globe. 

The importance of these different States is derived, 
first, from the native richness of their soil, pregnant 
with the precious metals and luxuriant with tropical, 
vegetation, and, secondly,, from their exceptional struc- 
ture and middle situation, which adapt them so provi- 
dentially to the transit of passengers and traffic going 
to or coming from the Atlantic and Pacific basins. More 
than two-thirds of the population of the world must 
seek a passage at the points where the American penin- 
sula offers the route shortest, speediest, and safest. Not 
less than twenty-six routes, including nineteen ship- 
canals and seven railways, have already been explored 
and carefully surveyed by citizens of the United States, 
of England, and of France. The newspapers relate every 



12 l^EFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 

week the intrigues fomented by foreign agents to get 
possession, at any price, of the Panama railroad, and of 
other leading routes. Why are you constructing the 
Pacific railroad across American territory, where the 
greatest breadth of the Continent exists, if not to secure 
a share of this immense commerce, which will tax to 
their utmost capacity all the projected channels of oceanic 
intercommunication ? 

Wake up then, statesmen of America, seize the cov- 
eted prize, lest strangers, more alert than you have 
shown yourselves, get forcible possession of it ! 

8. How have the United States arrived at their pres- 
ent aggregate? By successive acquisitions, effected 
through grants, purchase, exchange, cession, treaty, 
compensation, colonization, conquest, annexation. Let 
us examine which of these means can be used to gain 
possession of the non-unified territories, and what new 
methods may suggest themselves. 

Russian America should be acquired by purchase. 

When this last bargain is consummated, it will Vie next 
to impossible to allow the intervening territory of British 
Columbia to break the continuity of our Pacific domin- 
ions. It might be ceded as a settlement of claims for 
the depredations of rebel cruisers amied in English 
ports. 

Since the Territory of Hudson's Bay Company is offered 
for sale, some of our millionaires ought to associate, 
themselves for the purpose of buying it on their own 

account, and malic B present of it to the United States. 
Liberty, our bride, is worth the offering. 



UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 13 

Without presuming too little of the disinterestedness 
of the Danes, it is not impertinent to guess they will 
gladly exchange Danish America for dollars and cents. 

Congress, by a bill or resolution, shoidd direct the 
State department to commence negotiations with the 
British government about authorizing the provinces 
of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, 
and Prince Edward, to submit to their respective con- 
stituencies the question whether they would deem it 
their best interest to join their fortunes to those of their 
American neighbors. 

England, Spain, France, Holland, Sweden, and Den- 
mark, will be likewise approached touching our inten- 
tion to acquire from them the right of possession of 
their several property in the West Indian Archipelago. 

Our government might arrange with Mexico a rectifi- 
cation of frontiers on the South, embracing Lower Cali- 
fornia and the territory — between the Sierra Madre and 
the Gulf of California, from the river Gila to Mazatlan 
inclusively — comprised in the states of Sonora and 
Sinaloa. 

A friendly correspondence ought to be pursued be- 
tween our State department and the independent gov- 
ernments of Mexico, of Central America, of Colombia, of 
Hayti, and of the Sandwich Islands. 

To the patriotism and intelligence of these States 
address strong appeals. 

Among other arguments in favor of the scheme urge 
upon them our views of a continental organization, in 
which their autonomous revendications would find an 



14 UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 

adequate representation in their local governments,. 
Whose preservation is assured and whose authority must 
Ik inspected. 

Before their dazzled eyes, display sunhursts of the 
glory attainable only by America integralized : their 
State pride and their self-interest will be heightened to 
an undreamt degree of power, of wealth, and of grandeur. . 

What has been accomplished thus far through instinct- 
ive force, we must undertake to do for the future as a clear 
matter of business — using to that effect the same scien- 
tific accuracy and rules that presided at the preliminary 
surveys, contracts, and actual construction of the Pacific 
railway. 

Enlightened by events of a recent date, and mindful 
of future complications, the Congress should solemnly 
declare, that the United States Government forbids foreign 
. rnments and their subjects henceforward to colonize 
any portion of North America* — to build therein any pub- 
lic highway that may cause detriment to our into 
and disturb our peace — to erect, North or South, any § 
eminent hostile in form or design to our republican in- 
itions — without obtaining beforehand the concurrence 
and assent of the American people. 

This manifesto, sweeping in its scope, definite in its 
terms, permanent in its character, would supersede the 
anterior declaration of president Monroe, susceptible of 
so niai!\ conflicting interpretations. Recognized the 
wrorld over as the American doctrine <»f continental in- 
tegi v. i; would he equivalent to a formal protectorate 
hboririg nations, or to an offensive and defen- 
sive alliance with them. 1' tble simplicity renders 
it preferable to either of these measures. 



UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 15 

Individual initiative probably will not wait for govern- 
mental action, and will direct currents of colonization, 
as in the case of Texas and Kansas, toward the key- 
points of the Unifiable portions of the Continent. 

War, blood-stained war, is repugnant to the true policy 
of the nineteenth century. If any antagonistic power 
should provoke the United States to mortal conflict, an 
army of a million of men should overrun the hostile 
country and occupy it, whilst a fleet of men-of-war 
should be despatched to blockade every port, so that 
the war be terminated at the earliest moment, upon the 
sole but facile condition that the invaded country attach 
an additional star to our brilliant constellation of 
States. 



9. This question of Unification, so vast and so many- 
sided, concerns the entire American people. The press, 
meetings and conventions, should quicken the Legislative 
and Executive departments into . an earnest compli- 
ance with the popular orders. Eesolutions of the follow- 
ing tenor might be introduced, discussed, and passed : 

In the name of Democracy that insures the hereditary 
control of the people over their own destinies ; 

In the name of Liberty, which leads Progress, spreads 
Education; and decrees Equality before the law ; 

In the name of Solidarity, whose dogma inculcates an 
inner and outer spirit of Fraternity among all the chil- 
dren of the earth ; 






L6 UNIFICATION OF NORTH AMERICA. 

The People of the United States of America, in con- 
vention assembled, 

/.'• iolix, That, believing themselves invested with the 
Bacxed duty of engrafting these great principles upon all' 
pints of their continental home, they invite all the in- 
habitant* thereof to hasten forward and contribute their 
just share in the performance of the noble task which 
thousands of years of cumulative history have imposed 
upon every citizen of North America ; 

//•-"/,■,, That they promise their new allies ample pro- 
tection for all their rights, since they welcome them to 
the Union as the equals of their confederate brothers ; 

Resolve, That, for the purpose of forwarding the good 
work, they will lend then- moral influence, and — if need 
be — material aid, to any nation or colony that may decide 
to ask for them. 



10. Unifiers of America, do you think God has lifted 
ontinent out of the depths of the sea for idle de- 
signs? Do you not see it was to furnish a worthy exam- 
ple of territorial wholeness and of popular g< i 
to the less happy nations of the globe? 

' Lei us organize I of believers in our 

dutiful programme ! Let us combine to achieve a grafted 
matchless, Unity of North America I 



54 W 



PRICE, 10 CENTS. 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the j-oar 18C7, 

By George Batcheloh, 

In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 

District of New York. 



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